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Walter E. Traprock - The Cruise of the Kawa
explaining the workings of various home-made navigating instruments which he had manufactured.
"This here is a astrolabe," he said, "jackass quadrant, I call it." He displayed a sort of rudimentary
crossbow. "An' this here is a perspective-glass, kind of a telescope, see? Made'er bamboo. The lenses
ain't very good; had to use fish-skin. Got my compass-plant nicely rooted in sand, see - she's doin' fine."
"What's this all for?" asked Swank.
Triplett smiled malevolently.
"Don't you want to know where you be? I've got it all figgered out. Got a chart, too."
He unrolled a broad leaf on which he had drawn a rough sketch of the island, probable north and possible
latitude and longitude.
Again the chill of dismay and apprehension which I had felt before in Triplett's presence ran up and
down my spine. It was beginning to dawn upon me that Triplett was planning a get-away. "My God!" I
cried, "take that thing away! What you trying to do, Triplett? Hook us up to civilization with all its
deviltry and disease and damned conventions? Don't you appreciate the beauty of getting outside of the
covers of a geography?"
The old devil only grinned, his very leer seeming to say, "I've got a trump card up my sleeve, young
man."
What might have been a bitter scene was interrupted by something much more serious.
We saw Whinney running along the edge of the lagoon into which he presently plunged and began
swimming madly in our direction. As he drew near I saw that he was deathly white. When we dragged
him over the rail he collapsed in the scuppers and burst into tears.
"What is it?" we questioned.
He jerked out his answer in hoarse, broken fragments, while our blood froze.
"It's come.... I was afraid of it.... from the first... it's here... we've done it... we've got to get out... it is not
fair..."
"For heaven's sake," I shouted. "What's here? What have we done?"
"Disease!" he panted. "Disease! You know ... how the other islands... Marquesas... Solomons... Tongas...
dying, all dying."
His voice sank and he covered his face with his hands, shoulders shaking.
"What... what is it? Who has it?"
It was then that Whinney made the supreme call on his nerve, stiffened visibly and answered in a dead
voice, "My wife, Babai-Alova-Babai, has prickly-heat!"
It seemed to me in that moment that the entire atoll revolved rapidly in one direction while the mountain
twirled in the other. Through my brain crashed a sequence of sickening pictures, the lepers of Molokai
with their hideous affliction imported from China, the gaunt, coughing wrecks of Papeete, the scarecrows
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